Kerala techie held in Bangalore for suspected terror links

Bangalore, Feb 22 (IANS) A software engineer from Kerala has been arrested here for suspected links with terror groups and the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). A search is on for four others, police said. The engineer working in an IT company in the city has been identified as Yahya Khan. He was picked up Thursday evening from his residence in Guruappana Palya, a thickly populated area with a substantial Muslim population, about 12 km from the city centre.

Guruppana Palya is one of the many localities along the Bannerghatta Road where leading IT companies like IBM, Oracle and Honeywell have offices.

Police declined to give more details on Yahya Khan, who is said to be in his 30s.

He was picked up on the basis of information provided by Mohammed Asif, a final year medical student arrested last month from Hubli in northern Karnataka. Asif is also suspected to have links with SIMI, which officials say was pretty active in Guruppana Palya area where it had an office till it was banned.

Besides Asif, police have detained Asadullah Abubacker, a first year student of ayurvedic medicine, and Mohammed Ghouse alias Riyazuddin Nasir, son of a cleric in Hyderabad.

Abubacker and Nasir were arrested in early January from Honnali in the central Karnataka district of Davangere. Their interrogation led to Asif being picked up.

All three have been subjected to narco-analysis, polygraph and brain mapping tests.

While there is no official word on the information provided by the three during these tests, local media reports say they have confessed to planning strikes against well-known temples, IT companies, dams and airports.

The police have been searching a forest area on the border of Dharwad and Uttara Kannada districts for a hidden arms cache as Asif has reportedly confessed to terror training camps being organised there at the behest of the banned Lashkar-e-Toiba.